Energy filtering TEM analysis of nanoelectronic device structures: Fast and efficient way to assess chemical microstructures

Abstract

Devices in nano-electronics frequently consist of complex two- or three-dimensional structures with complex chemistries. A detailed characterisation thus requires not only a thorough structural characterisation, but also a highly resolved characterisation of elemental distributions. Energy filtering transmission electron microscopy is a very valuable tool for such investigations, as will be demonstrated on the basis of three different examples: a novel design of a nanoscale field effect transistor, a model design for a magnetic random access memory cell and magnetic core shell nanoparticles suitable for future nanoscale memory.

Spontaneous Assembly of Miktoarm Stars into Vesicular Interpolyelectrolyte Complexes

“…Additionally, thermal agitation is more relevant for these small objects, possibly leading to restricted tumbling of the adsorbed vesicles (as a simple estimate, the tumbling frequency can be derived from the rotational diffusion equation D r = k T /(8π ηR 3 ), leading to tumbling motions in the 10 −3 s time scale for 60 nm‐sized vesicles; the time scale is within seconds for 600 nm‐sized vesicles). Therefore, a typical gray‐scale profile of the hollow vesicle structure can only be imaged for large vesicles (>300 nm) for which examples are shown in Figure 2A–C 37. Only few of these large vesicles with reasonable internal contrast were found, generally in regions of large sample thickness, where the typical smaller vesicles could not be resolved anymore.…”